Who determines what is normal, valuable, human, or even possible? How do the ways we understand reality shape the ways we exercise power over one another?
This senior seminar explores the intimate relationship between meaning, technology, and power through the lens of political ontology: the critical investigation of how our understanding of reality shapes the organization of political life. Drawing on three influential thinkers—Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben—we examine how historically inherited assumptions, categories, and distinctions shape our experience of the world, determine what counts as truth, and influence whose lives are valued, protected, or excluded.
From Heidegger’s critique of modern technology to Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics and Agamben’s investigation of sovereign power, the course culminates in an examination of two pressing contemporary phenomena: artificial intelligence and the resurgence of fascism. Ultimately, we ask whether questioning our most fundamental assumptions about reality might open new possibilities for freedom, ethics, and political life.
